Pitching his "Bidenomics" policies ahead of the hotly contested 2024 election, President Joe Biden recapitulated an oft-repeated claim this week that the inflation-hit American economy is robust and fast-growing compared to that of other global powers.
CLAIM: "Today, the U.S. has the highest economic growth rate, leading the world economies since the pandemic—the highest in the world!" Biden claimed while delivering presidential remarks at the Old Chicago Main Post Office in Illinois earlier Wednesday.
BIDEN: "The U.S. has the highest economic growth rate...since the pandemic—the highest in the world!" pic.twitter.com/DABcSjtq0k
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 28, 2023
FACTS: Last year, the U.S. economy grew by 2.1% and 5.7% in 2021, per the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. However, dozens of other countries experienced larger growth—many small or developing nations, according to yearly data published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) documenting real GDP growth by annual percent change.
IMF's figures show that in the year Biden took office, Ireland (13.6%), Chile (11.7%), Turkey (11.4%), Colombia (11%), India (9.1%), Greece (8.4%), Israel (8.6%), China (8.4%), the U.K. (7.6%), France (6.8%), and Italy (7%) all had higher real GDP growth than America's 5.7%. Meanwhile, in 2022, Armenia (12.6%), the Bahamas (11%), Bangladesh (7.1%), Belize (11.4), Croatia (6.3%), Egpyt (6.6%), Iraq (8.1%), Kuwait (8.2%), Panama (10%), and Saudi Arabia (8.7%) beat the U.S.'s 2.1%.
(Though there are varying ways to measure growth, it should be noted that everyone's economies in 2021 rebounded from the COVID-19 shutdowns that decimated domestic markets, so the growth rates had reached higher-than-usual spikes.)
Even CNN's resident fact-checker Daniel Dale had authored an in-depth piece debunking Biden's "fastest-growing economy in the world. The world!" claim when he made it in June 2022 on the ABC late-night show "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"
Columbia University's Graduate School of Business finance professor Laura Veldkamp told CNN there is "no way" that Biden's claim is true if he was referring to a percentage change. However, she stressed that "growth" can "mean many things."
"We'll respectfully stick with our harsher conclusion," Dale wrote in the CNN article. "If Biden was citing some unusual or obscure measure of growth, he could have explained that. He didn't, and the White House didn't either when asked for comment."
This spring, U.S. economic growth slipped in the first quarter of 2023. GDP rose at a 1.1% annual rate from January to March, a significant slowdown from 2.6% growth in the fourth quarter, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported in late April.
RATING: Biden's claim that the U.S. has the "highest economic growth rate...in the world" is FALSE.
Data on real GDP growth lists many countries—big and small—whose numbers are better than America's throughout Biden's first term. "Bidenomics" is not working for the American people despite what the White House and the president proclaim.